Island Girl Can't Swim

Laura Andrea Vázquez López, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Island Girl Can’t Swim is an exploration of romantic love by and about someone who seemingly does not understand it. Through different frameworks, those of Puerto Rico’s colonialism, pop culture and personal experience, understanding is attempted within a society with rigid definitions of love. This rigidity extends beyond those of heteronormativity, nationality, and culture to include, and center, experience and what qualifies as love. Through a narrative constructed through poems with characters, such as Island Girl and her main love interest Border Boy, blurs the lines of expectations among a variety of structures that are considered given, if the aforementioned are even acknowledged as structures at all.

Subject Area

Caribbean literature|Creative writing

Recommended Citation

Vázquez López, Laura Andrea, "Island Girl Can't Swim" (2021). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI28541336.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI28541336

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